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Comment by doczoidberg | Hacker News Reader

As you mentioned those universities are extremeley hard what means time consuming. Starting a company is time consuming too. Doing both at the same time is nearly impossible.

But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company. It would be better if colleges would honor this instead of just ignoring.

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>But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company.

What?

Most people would argue that having knowledge of the field, experience and contacts; the sort of thing you get after working in a field for a while, is going to help more than the slightly increased physical stamina you have as a very young person.

Later you have a family and responsibility for your children. In college you are free and can take risks.

I certainly agree that children are a big responsibility, and take a lot of time... From what I've seen, though, of small businesses? Experience matters even more. I know a bunch of Entrepreneurs who are also parents. I don't personally understand how, I don't think I could handle being a parent even with an easy office job, but many entrepreneurs seem to be able to be a parent and run a business at the same time. I can't tell you how many of the informal meetings that are also dinner parties had children underfoot, but it's a reasonably large percentage.

Even if you do think that having a child will slow you down, being older doesn't automatically mean you will become a parent... the technology in that field is pretty good at this point.

There is good decade between when you graduate and when you expect children.

Starting a business before 20-21 is not really ideal. Yes, some people can do it. But those people have an over the top mental and emotional maturity that nominal case is lacking, and college is a great way to get there.

Are you really suggesting that you see a CEO in a nominal high school graduate? Most of them don't have a slightest clue how to deal with people, let alone negotiate their terms -- knowledge in domain being aside.

There are avenues such as taking project based classes in the area you want to start something, doing an independent study, working on senior research in field one wants to work in. You can do what Google guys did in senior thesis time.

But I agree, it would be nice to have a guided entrepreneur-track independent study style option. Or at least a more startup-friendly environment and outlook in departments.

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